In the United States today, no less than in other times and places, the subject of sex is charged with anxiety. In merely raising it, the writer must court suspicion -and consciously, for taboos surround him; immoderate interest would alert, though for different reasons, both the popular and professional mind. Sexual restrictions, moreover, have this logic on their side: while customs vary, the maintenance of emotional tension between male and female-hence, of society's biological vigor-is characteristically associated with some form of social censorship.' The natural state of freedom from sexual inhibition is far more likely to be a fantasy of the sophisticated.2 Indeed, the rational background of restraint may be better understood by the primitive than by the modern mind. A young West African writer, for example, has explained with awareness and regret why his tribesmen surround with mystery the initiation ceremony of pre-adolescent males:3